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His chin dipped as he nodded just once in confirmation.
Now it was Eliza who shook her head as her hands flew up in exasperation. “So she said I was on my period!?”
At her outburst, Nate’s lips started to curve at the corners. She could see that he was starting to find the situation funny but was doing his best to hold it together. Seeing him fighting not to give into the comedy of this whole thing caused her to see the humor in it and she burst out laughing.
Once she started, he joined her. Every time one of them would start gaining their composure, they would look at each other and lose it again. At one point she was laughing so hard that she hugged her arms around her waist and actually doubled over.
Finally, she managed to stop her hysterics and wiped the moisture that had gathered beneath her eyes and was now covering her cheeks. Nate was also able to compose himself and he took a deep breath, as he used his forefinger and thumb to do the same thing beneath his own eyes.
Eliza knew that she shouldn’t push her luck, since they seemed to be getting along, but she couldn’t help telling him what she felt. She was bursting with emotion, most of which wasn’t appropriate to tell him, but there was one thing that she could say. One small confession. “I love hearing you laugh. I’ve missed it. It’s always been one of my favorite sounds in the world.”
The second the words left her mouth, his expression changed. Hardened. She dropped her gaze to the ground so he couldn’t see how badly him shutting her out hurt her. She shouldn’t have pushed her luck. But since she had, and there was nowhere for him to run, she figured she might as well go for it and push again.
No whammy, no whammy, no whammy. Stop.She grinned as the catchphrase from Press Your Luck played in her head.
“What?” Nate asked.
She lifted her head. “I said I love hearing you laugh. I’ve missed it.”
The corners of his eyes squinted, almost as if her words hurt him. But he quickly recovered. “No. I mean what joke were you grinning at?”
“Joke?” Had she accidently said the phrase out loud?
“Every time your lips turn up in a little smirk at the same time your head wobbles slightly it means you’re thinking of a pun or a joke, or something equally as corny.”
Eliza was speechless.
For a second, anyway, then she asked, “How do you know that?”
“You used to do it all the time. One day I asked you what you were thinking right when I noticed it. You told me nothing, but I bugged you and you admitted that when Mr. Hawkins told a student he couldn’t ‘have it his way,’ you said you thought, ‘yeah, this is science class, not Burger King.’”
Eliza didn’t remember that exchange but it sounded like something that would’ve amused her. Her lips pulled up, it still did.
“Wow.” Nate grinned and shook his head. “You still think that’s funny.”
“I love corny humor, what can I say?” she smiled wider.
In that moment, everything clicked back into place. They fell back into their easy rhythm. They were them again. Talking. Laughing. Calling each other out about stuff. This was how it had been. But just as easily as it came, it passed. Nate stood up straighter and his eyes rose to look at the ceiling as if he were counting the seconds until they could get out.
Since this might be her only shot, she figured she’d try to clear the air. Her arms began moving as she spoke. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said when we…when you…when I saw you in front of Tempting. I didn’t mean it, well, that’s a lie. I did mean it. But I didn’t mean for it to make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. I was just trying to be funny and well, I think we’ve established that I have a questionable sense of humor and am easily amused. I don’t want us to be like this. I just want us to be able to tal—”
“What are you talking about?” he cut in, looking genuinely perplexed.
“You know. The joke that I made, when you were…” She swallowed over the lump that had formed in her throat thinking about him holding the garments that she happened to be wearing right now. “When you picked up my things.”
“You made a joke?” He still appeared to have no idea what she was talking about.
Butterflies flitted in her stomach as she repeated what she’d said. “Yeah, when you were holding my…stuff…I said that I wanted you to see them, but on me not on the ground.”
The intensity returned back in his eyes, and the energy shifted yet again. This time, instead of feeling his stare internally, she felt it dance on the surface of her skin. Goosebumps rose on her arms as the sensation made its way over her bare flesh, which thanks to the fact that she’d dressed for him and not for Cold Castle—as she’d mentally renamed it—there was a lot of flesh to cover.
“And you meant it?”
“What?” she breathed, sounding completely vulnerable and not caring the slightest bit.
“You said, ‘I didn’t mean it, that’s a lie, I did mean it’,” he repeated back to her like he was a court stenographer.
A sexy, dominant, panty-melting court stenographer.
